The lies that creep in unawares

Lately I've been thinking about how what I take in mentally, emotionally, and spiritually affects what I believe, how I think, and how I act. It makes sense when compared to my physical state of being - if I eat too much meat or fat, my stomach feels sick; if I eat fruits and vegetables and beans, I feel healthy all around; if I eat too much sugar, my blood sugar spikes and crashes; if I don't eat enough, I get tired and shaky; and so on. What I put into my body affects how my body feels and how well it works, so it is logical that what I put into my mind and heart affects how they feel and how well they operate. I just never really thought about it that much.

But if I listen to songs like "I Am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel, it makes me more emotionally closed off than I already am, and it makes me want to be independent and self-sufficient in a negative relationship-less sort of way, while if I listen to songs like "Voice of Truth" by Casting Crowns, I gain confidence and faith in God and have more joy and optimism to face the life before me.

This is why I think a lot of the books I read in the formative years of junior high were so unhealthy for me. These books were rightfully classics, in many cases, but they were bad food for my mind at that point in its development, like alcohol would be for a child. But I didn't know that then. So in the years when I was starting to figure out what the world was like, and wonder what the purpose of life was, and discover who I was and what I wanted for my future, I was reading books about the futility of life - books that portrayed pleasure as the only good and showed the emptiness of seeking and obtaining it, books that showed life as a prison of despair that killed any hope or dream or love that dared to be born at all. And all that I took in went into my mind and my heart and filled it with half-truths and lies that unnoticeably became part of the way I viewed the world.

God, please let me fill my heart and my mind with your truth and love and hope so that all these falsehoods that I have believed - both the ones whose source I can identify and the ones that snuck in from some unknown place - can be washed out of me, so that I can build my life on the things that are real, the things that matter, the things that have eternal significance in Your kingdom. Thank You for giving me eyes to see so that I can start meditating on the things that are good and true and lovely and pure and be vigilant against the deceits and snares of this world.